Surviving a heat wave. Or a dirty bomb.

Heat wave hits Washington, DC. Temperatures to reach 103 degrees.

But my apartment is cool. And shady. Mainly because my husband is a master of something he calls, Shade Management. He is so serious about this concept that as I type, he's on the roof blocking our skylight with a blue camping tarp. My son squeals with joy "It's blue in here! Can we leave it like this forever?"

I'm not exaggerating.

Until the heat breaks, I will be living in a bunker-like fortress with a hodgepodge of makeshift window treatments giving my home a certain crack house chic. Or perhaps meth lab circa 1990s. I'll have to ask my decorator friend.

Naked windows let in the view. And the scorching sun. So, he's taped cardboard to one, clipped a beach towel over another and, in the kitchen, stapled one of my favorite sheets to the wall, promising that he didn't put a hole in it. And here I've been living foolishly under the impression that making a hole is integral to the stapling process.

He also rigged the floor ducts with pencils and books to redirect cold air away from the windows where it immediately gets sucked out and burned to a crisp. They look like a snares for trapping small woodland creatures should the take-out grid go down. Which is exactly why I'm a loyal viewer of Dual Survivor. They cover things like that.

Some would complain. But actually, it inspires the survivalist in me.   

Wind-up flashlight? Check. Canned tuna? Lots. Can opener? Got it. (You need only have that nightmare once.) Plenty of candles, bottled water and Zip Car on my speed dial should my attempts at hot wiring an escape vehicle fail.

I go into survival mode very quickly. And becoming a mother has only quickened my response time.

When a tornado warning threatened DC, I packed emergency food supplies before the first raindrop fell. Actually, I was still breast feeding at the time and therefore a Survival Goddess. Not only would I be able to feed my son without modern technologies, but I could also treat wounds because breast milk acts as a topical antiseptic. When choosing teams in a game of Judgement Day, always pick the nursing woman.

So, as much as my aesthetics are assailed by all the barricading, I kind of enjoy temporarily living in a shit-just-hit-the-fan film. As long as it's not the quiet, apocalyptic delight Right at Your Door because nothing goes as expected in that one. Although, I do recommend it. 

And of all the decorating styles out there, Modern Armageddon isn't so bad. The only thing I'm missing is a bad-ass costume which seems to be a necessity when all systems break down.

Though, as great as this full-length leather trench would be for looting a grocery store of all non-perishables while evading armed foreign interlopers, it could be a little hot in a heat wave.

Variation on a Personal Debt Crisis

"Hey, let's buy a lighthouse."

He says it just like that. As I'm picking up toys off the living room rug. 

Excuse me? Who are you and how did you get into my apartment? 

Okay, yes. He is my husband. And yes. We have saved and are ready to buy our own place. But a lighthouse? I think I've mentioned a ranch house. But never a lighthouse. Ever. 

"They're cheap right now," he adds.

His attempt to appeal to my frugal side is transparent, yet appreciated. Regardless, is a lighthouse really something you want to buy in the discount bin? What if the roof leaks? Hell, what if the walls leak? It's just begging to be a great party story. "Did I ever tell you about this couple I know who bought a lighthouse ..." 

I suspect my husband may be trying to recapture some of his childhood that did, in fact, involve shark fishing with old, crusty, drunk fisher people. Mine didn't. To me, Jaws is a cautionary tale and the ocean is mainly a backdrop for lobster dinners, tropical cocktails and a cute bikini. Not necessarily mine.   

Admittedly living in a lighthouse is not without its allure, especially the possibility for themed dinners and costume parties. Though the pirate motif could get stale pretty fast. And I can't really pull off Ralph Lauren's nautical line.

There's also my son to consider. It could very well shape his future. Or scar it. Either way, he could write a book about it one day. "My parents decided it would be a good idea to raise their son in a lighthouse. Here's my story ..." It is our job as parents to give him options after all.  

But a lighthouse?

What if it doesn't look like my idealized, romantic image of a lighthouse? Like this.

What if it looks like this? 

Or this?!

But I'll consider it. I like an adventure. And besides my husband does go along with some of my less-than-stellar ideas like the time he agreed to juggle eggs while I tap danced around him to the song "Me and My Shadow," a piece I choreographed for a retirement home performance. 

You could say I owe him. Big time.

Connect The Dots

Let's play a game.

First, name three things that have seemingly nothing in common. Then find a common thread that connects them together in 500 words or less.

I'll go first.

1. Fisher-Price Little People
2. Yoga
3. Drunks

Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market, Washington DC

It's Saturday morning in Mt. Pleasant, my charming-yet-sometimes-crime-infested Washington, DC neighborhood. I'm going to the farmers market, a quaint scene that unfolds near my apartment each Saturday. Not bad for urban living less than two miles from the White House.

I also work there. (At the market. Not the White House.) But not today. Today I'm here to rendezvous with a stranger who wants to buy my son's Fisher-Price Little People collection. I'll be the tall, curly haired woman carrying a plastic roller coaster, I tell her. She responds that she'll be one of two Asian women with a tall white guy.

The racial profiling helps. I find her easily, something I expected. It's a small market. What I didn't expect was my emotional attachment to these little plastic people as I explain how much they meant to my son. "The school bus sings a safety song," I sniff.

I pull it together and buy some peaches. Then mingle. I see Holly, my son’s favorite yoga instructor. He’s taken as many yoga classes as I have and has been infinitely more successful. Once I fell asleep and drooled all over the rental mat. Another time I was kicked out. But that’s deserves its own 500 words. 

Holly knows this about me but invites me to an open house at Past Tense yoga studio anyway. Sure, I’ll come. It’s near my apartment. There’ll be free food and drinks. And I won’t have to wear Lycra. I'm at peace with all this. 

Heading back to my place, I run into the shoal of drunk, homeless Latino men who have taken up residence on my block and have been pissing on my trash cans. Some are asleep. Some are singing a song in Spanish that sounds really dirty. You can just tell.

Remembering what I heard in one yoga class, I tell the Universe what I want. "Please don't let these drunks see the flyer and understand the meaning of 'Open House.' Namaste." I realize this makes me a candidate for some sensitivity training course. I'm at peace with that too. 

Passed out? Or meditating? Who's to say.

But the owner of the studio is so sweet, she just may let them in. You know how yogis are. She may see yogic potential, like the guy in the photo on the far right who seems to be doing The Savasana, or Corpse pose. It's important to know the difference because in DC, if you call 911 for a corpse-like drunk, the fire department will show up too and, unlike the Little People Lil' Movers School Bus that I just sold, there's no easy on/off switch for the sirens and sirens can really ruin the peace and harmony of a Saturday morning in Mt. Pleasant.  

"The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved"

"Fancy Fillies" by art deco artist Jeff Williams.  

Hunter S. Thompson nailed it. Despite all the fancy hats and chilled Mint Juleps, horse races are decadent and depraved.

On Kentucky Derby day, the crowd I see picnicking in Georgetown, Washington's rich, historic neighborhood, with their elaborate hats and seersucker, covers the decadent part. Now for depraved.

In my favorite pizza joint where I get a slice and a pint for $5, I wouldn't exactly call the young woman wearing a millinery mess two feet in diameter, depraved. More like obnoxious as it clogs up the aisle. However, another Derby Girl, overly dressed and stumbling drunk at 4 in the afternoon, bangs up against the wall on the way back to her barstool. That's more like it.

I wonder if the woman who chose to swathe her head in yards of turquoise netting has a bet in the Derby. Does she know what OTB stands for? Has she ever been to a horse race? Or does she just like hats. Hard to tell. Now I'm being judgmental. I feel I have the right. A strange, inappropriate thing to feel. But when I hear "They're at post!" I'm a little girl again, back at the races, where instead of chiffon dresses and sprigs of herbs, there's old man wool and flat beer. Can't a girl wax nostalgic? Without all the young posers?

Even before my time, my maternal grandfather was the constable at Waterford Park, the local racetrack in West Virginia. My mother and her brothers would hang out just as I would with my brothers. 

My Grandma Katie, Grandpa Steve and Uncle Caiden at The Track. 

In the 1970s when it became our weekend family outing, Waterford was packed with career gamblers, people cashing in their pay checks, illegal doping. Cigar smoke. Character. In those days, if a horse was unlucky enough to break a leg during a race, they shot it in the head on the track. A white doctor's screen shielded spectators but didn't stifle the gun shot. "Mommy, why is that big, white sheet on the track?" BAM!

I loved the race track. I'd spend all day kicking asides cigarette butts to collect the worthless losing tickets that carpeted the floor. Everyone held them with such white-knuckled grips, whapping them against their thighs yelling for that "Goddamned horse to get the fucking lead out!" that they just had to be special.

And sometimes they were.

I was about three years old, when I handed my father a treasured scavenged ticket telling him it was special. The ticket showed a losing 3, 4 perfecta. Gamblers are a superstitious lot. So, of course he bet it. And hit for $500. The 3, 4 perfecta remained his bet, boxed usually, for decades to come. Not the luckiest of gamblers, he studied old racing forms as if trying to crack code. He knew things like which horses to bet on if the track was muddy. And to bet more if your horse just peed because it'd be lighter. Stuff you just can't learn from the horse betting books that lined his shelves.

My mother yelling for he horse coming down the stretch.

My mother's favorite bet was 1, 3, 7 after winning $10,000 on a long shot trifecta. We were escorted, as a family, to the parking lot by security guards that night. Where my father took a mathematical approach to betting, she relied on her Hungarian Gypsy heritage. I would wish and wish for his horse to win. But she was the lucky one. Other gamblers knew it too. Old men and women, gamblers she knew well, asked her as she stood in line at the betting window, "Hey, Kathy. Whodya' like in the 5th?" Word got around quickly when she was hot.

Dougie after winning some money for my mom.

She also bet the birthdays of her children. But with seven kids, the math could get a little dizzying. It became condensed into a system where she only bet the next upcoming birthday. Unless Dougie was riding. Doug Williams was her favorite jockey. Kelly, a pretty blond, was a close second. I grew up thinking all mothers had favorite jockeys. And a bookie named Jimmy the Greek. Of course.

Visiting my parents as an adult, we would still go. But it wasn't the same. Over time, even my parents stopped going. It's now called Mountaineer Park. Gambling machines draw the crowds, not the horses. Sad.

Hunter S. Thompson

I realize things clean up with age. Pole Dancing classes at the gym. Office types using "pimp" as a verb. Even Las Vegas, Sin City, is filled with family fun. Maybe that's why Mr. Thompson shot himself. Instead of Fear and Loathing he'd have to write about Cher and The Lion King.

Before you suck your teeth at that one, do know that in addition to the horse track, another common family outing was the shooting range at the Paris Sportsman Club. That's Paris, Pennsylvania. Not France. So, I'm betting that Gun Enthusiast Hunter wouldn't mind the suicide crack.

I understand why some may want to pretend that horse racing is gentile and highbrow. But I prefer Mr. Thompson's lurid version. It's closer to home.